I have to tell you, Hershey's has grappled with the incredible inconvenience of snacking - and won.

Hershey's has created "popable" versions of their delicious candy treats. Kit Kat bars are bars no more. Now they're small lumps, sort of half way between a sphere and a cube so they have "no sharp corners" (perhaps to reduce litigation expenses from snacking-related injuries) and they've packaged them to appeal to all the rush-rush, on-the-go, no-time-for-a-sit-down-meal, give-me-something-easy-to-roll-out-of-the-bag-into-[my]-hand types.

Brilliant, really, because in the past tearing open a Kit Kat was complicated and intimidating - what with the tearing and the pulling - and consumed far too much time. But the situation was even worse, because after revealing the chocolatey treasure inside you were faced with the bewildering task of actually having to snap those crisp fingers lengthwise only to then suffer the demands of using your incisors to clip off an edible-sized morsel before the actual pleasures of consuming the chocolate could begin.

I count no less than three steps in the old-school way of eating a Kit Kat (tearing, snapping, biting) but Hershey's has increased their products' usability by reducing that to just two steps: 1) tearing, and 2) popping. (If Kit Kats were websites, their users would be more efficient and probably a lot happier right now.)

Addressing the question of their products melting, or, coalescing back into its larger natural chocolatey treat form inside the newly designed bags, Hershey's retorted on their website with characteristic level-headed honesty by stating, "Depends on how hot it is - but most people eat bites too quickly to have to worry about this…" They know us too well!

It's important to note that the popable versions are not only often less expensive, but you're given more of them to eat, thus increasing the empty-calories-to-dollar ratio. This is a revolution in chocolate delivery mechanisms and marketing methodologies. But most importantly, Hershey's is giving us back what we all sorely lack: time. Time saved in that extra snacking step can now be spent with our kids, or reading Joyce's Ulysses, or sequencing the DNA of dinosaurs and amphibians. You can't put a dollar value on time.

Hershey's, you've given us more than a new way of consuming delicious chocolatey treats; you've given us back our lives. Bless you.